WGAW president Christopher Keyser praised Marshall’s ability to chronicle friendships through his writing while announcing the honor.

“Garry Marshall‘s filmography – from ‘The Joey Bishop Show’ to ‘Happy Days’ – is a virtual history of American television comedy. Both of-their-time and timeless, his shows are a gentle, generous, comic mirror held up to late mid-century America,” Keyser said. “And no one is a finer or funnier chronicler of friendship – male or female (or alien) – than Garry Marshall. Beloved both for his iconic work and the warmth of his spirit, today we rightly place him on the short list of the best of our best.”

A five-time WGA nominee, Marshall won a Writers Guild Award in 1967 for co-writing the “Road to Lebanon” episode of “The Danny Thomas Special.”